How I remember

 

I don't know what it's like for others to remember things.  I don't know how other people remember the things that happen to them, how they put all the pieces together.  I see the terrible things that happened to me in parts, there are pictures and feelings. Other times that I can still feel it in my bones.  For me, I remember things mostly in pictures, because my mind was usually long gone by the time the actual rapes happened.  I remember things mainly far away.  As far back as I can remember things have always happened to me, so leaving my own body was a very necessary skill. I don't remember a time not being used and abused.  I guess there is nowhere to put those pieces to process them; how a little girl figures out the sexual things that are happening to them when you are 5. There is no context not an understanding of the things being done.  As a little girl there is no way to fully comprehend the things that are happening to your body.  So, for me I remember mostly in pictures because I was either in the darkest place you could imagine or watching from the ceiling or farthest corner of the room. I can put together the things that happened as a woman today but that poor girl.  I feel like there are times that my body was in such excruciating pain and that with the pictures that I have in my head, I know what happened to me, to her.  Not often do those two things happen at the same time in my brain.  I could connect he hurt me, and I was bleeding, but pieces were missing because there was no way for my little mind to know.  I think that because so much happened so young that by the time that there was an understanding about what they were doing to my body, by the time they got to that point of the actual rape I was already long gone, far away in a place that was nowhere near what was happening.  

Its more than hard to try to explain this.  There is a part of me that feels guilty, trying to get the words out trying to put words to things that there is no sense for.  I don't know if I am making any sense at all.  I have to try. For my own sanity and sense of who I am, am I anything without these things? I need to try and get my head around this. Somehow all these parts and pieces need to go together.  Somehow, I need these things to mean something so I can breathe and put them down.

There was a nightmare two nights ago and it was one of the clearest memories, where the pictures feelings and memories were all happening at the same time.   It was the worst kind of nightmare where the things that happened were so very clear in every part of my brain. Every connection was there, and I wanted to die. I had a knowing of what was coming next; I was present and terrified. It was like a knife to my soul that I knew what they were doing, I was present and terrified.   I keep replaying it my mind.  I keep not believing that I can survive the things that I have.  I felt him, like right before he actually raped me and the panic knowing what was going to happen, feeling him and being so disgusted about what was about to happen to me.   Usually all of these pieces are separate making them easier to carry but not this one.  I woke up and haven't been able to get out of my own way.  I keep remembering that feeling right before he hurt me and it's disgusting.  I have gotten sick; I have sat outside trying to get away trying not to remember but it's there burnt into who I am and there is not a single thing that I can do about it.  SO, I have to try and give it meaning, give it a place so that it doesn't haunt me anymore. 

I heart your heart Callahan, I wish with all that I am that I could make this better.